“Finish the thought, Bern.”

“It’s just different, that’s all.”

“‘Softer, more feminine.’ That’s what you were gonna say, Bern. Right?”

“Well…”

“Pretty soon guys’ll be holding doors open for me, and I’ll be sipping Sambucca instead of Johnnie Walker Red, and I’ll lose my edge and turn into Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Is that what you were going to say?”

“Actually, I was going to say something about Chester Alan Arthur.”

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“To change the subject,” I said, “and because I saw his statue in Madison Square and spent the afternoon reading about him. He got the Vice-Presidential nomination in 1880 as a sop to Roscoe Conkling, the Republican boss of New York State. He was Garfield ’s running mate, and-”

“You don’t mean John Garfield, do you?”

“No, or Brian, either. James Abram Garfield, and the ticket won, and Garfield was inaugurated in March, and-”

“Not in January?”

“No, it took them longer in those days. Garfield was inaugurated in March, and in June he met up with Charles Guiteau. ‘My name is Charles Guiteau, my name I’ll never deny.’ Remember that song?”

“No, Bern, but I don’t remember a whole lot of songs from 1881.”

“Some folksinger recorded it a few years ago. I thought you might have heard it.”

“I must have been too busy listening to Anita O’Day and Billie Holiday. They didn’t play songs about Charles Guiteau in Paula’s or the Duchess. They might have in Swing Rendezvous, but that was before my time. Who was Charles Guiteau and why sing a song about him?”

“He was a disappointed office-seeker. He shot Garfield because he couldn’t get a job, and a month later Garfield died.”

“I guess dying took longer then, too.”

“It didn’t take long for Guiteau. They hanged him, and Chester Alan Arthur was President of the United States of America. And Roscoe Conkling thought he had the keys to Fort Knox, but it didn’t work out that way. Arthur wound up pushing for the Civil Service System, which eliminated most of the federal patronage and left the bosses with fewer jobs to hand out.”